Kontaktloser Resonant Gekoppelter Induktiver Absolut Positionssensor für Lineare Position und Drehwinkel Messanwendungen

The objective of this research was to develop a novel absolute angle sensor technology which is applicable for through-shaft applications. The sensor has to be narrow enough to be integrated in a ball bearing cap. SKF Österreich AG approached the Austrian Center of Competence in Mechatronics (ACCM) to conduct this research. The sensor works on principles similar to contactless resolvers. It bases on printed circuit board technologies and its working principles rely on mutual inductive coupling. Thus, the sensor only consists of a planar excitation coil and position sensing coils formed by conductive tracks on a narrow antenna PCB and a detached target PCB which is a passive resonant serial RLC circuit. Furthermore, this position sensor is suitable for rough industrial environments, offers a high inherent resolution, can measure target position over a wide measurement range, and can potentially measure multiple target locations simultaneously. The basic position resolution is improved by adding two additional finer pitched position sensing coils. The sensor provides amplitude modulated or phase modulated target position dependent output signals. Furthermore, mathematical models for both cases are derived and discussed in detail. The use of coupled resonances enables to overcome the weak coupling between the excitation coil and the target coil. A Cramer-Rao lower bound analysis was performed to evaluate the minimum achievable uncertainty of the position reading. The amplitude modulated positioning sensing coils signals were demodulated and transformed to a discrete time representation by bandpass sampling. A novel absolute angle measurement system for large trough shaft applications was introduced and discussed in detail. Furthermore, a notable advantage of this angle measurement principle is that the axial antenna PCB arrangement allows using the same antenna PCB for different shaft diameters.